


A Solution to the Hedgehog's Dilemma

by songlin



Series: What Comes Undone [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Cutting, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Kid Fic, Parenthood, Self-Harm, Teenagers, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-26
Updated: 2012-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-31 18:01:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songlin/pseuds/songlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief tale of utterly mad parents told by Miss Rosalind Watson-Holmes of 221B Baker Street. An epilogue of sorts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Solution to the Hedgehog's Dilemma

I started out life as Rosalind Cora Watson. I understand that Mum was vehement about keeping it at full length for a while, but I’ve been Rosie to them for as long as I can remember. To my friends I’m Rose, apart from a short period of time in my prepubescent years in which I decided I wanted to be Cora. To my teachers, I’m Rosalind or Miss Watson-Holmes. The Watson-Holmes is terribly stuffy, but when Mum and Dad got married and neither of them changed their names I felt that someone in the family needed a new surname to symbolize our union.

Side note: my parentals are insane. Possibly certifiably so. Despite their stark raving madness they are pretty excellent approximately 85% of the time, with the other 15% consisting mostly of when their battiness coincides unpleasantly with mine.

Today, for example, is a sweltering Monday in July. Term ended a week ago, my last fencing meet until September was yesterday and I haven’t another piano recital for _ages_. I’ve got friends--well, two; in writing I may seem a charming and likable young lady but in person I’m pants with people--but the shirt-lifting berks are off in the south of France shagging pretty boys. Or, more likely, looking at pretty boys and wishing they were shagging them. I would phone The Girlfriend, but she gets short with me if she thinks I’m calling her just because I’m bored. In brief, I’ve _nothing_ on.

Dad calls me “spiny” when I’m like that. “Watch yourself, she’s spiny today.” “Bit spiny this morning?” I think it’s because before my darling hedgehog Bilbo died, if I had nothing else to do I played with her. This was largely performed by picking her up when she was curled into a ball and rolling her back and forth on a towel until I teased her out, then letting her run around the carpet and watching my moron of a cat Pippin sniff her and realize quickly that attempting to touch the spiky ball thing was a poor plan. Alas, Bilbo has gone to the great rodent wheel in the sky along with Pip, and my current kitty companion Aslan is more of the sitting-on-top-of-cabinets-ignoring-you type and is no fun to pester, as he merely hisses and stalks off. Thus, I am very limited in my options for entertainment and intellectual enrichment.

Mum and Dad come in at an awful hour, fresh from assisting my dearest Uncle Greg in solving some grisly homicide. I do not hear them until step 12, which is poor for me, but I was playing the first movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique sonata and could not be bothered to pay attention to things that are not my lovely Essex upright grand piano and the ten fingers at the ends of my arms. Beethoven is fantastic when one’s mind is chomping at the bit, and anyways I need to do something to stay awake. I’m experimenting with polyphasic sleep, in which one sleeps in several short bursts throughout the day rather than long stretches at night and in the adjustment period I’m sleepy constantly.

I wait for the parentals to shed their coats before I come to the finish of the A section, shut the lid of the piano, turn, and fold my arms over my chest.

“Decided to do a bit of practicing before my one o’clock nap,” say I, very even. I have a plan, you see. Leading up to something. Very important, the strategies of this.

“Sounds lovely,” says Dad, and he kisses me on the cheek.

Normally I would smile and analyze what the kiss says, but I am in the middle of things. “It’s still not up to tempo.”

Dad grimaces. “All right, you’re in a bit of a spiny mood. Beethoven means spiny. What is it?”

I narrow my eyes at Mum, who is rummaging through the fridge. _“She_ knows.”

“Who knows?”

“Your wife does,” says I, accusingly.

“I do,” she says, straightening, a muffin in hand. “The sheet music.”

“My sheet music! _You moved it.”_

She shrugs and I am filled with a desire to commit a minor act of violence. “Was in the way.”

“It was sorted.”

“It _was_ a bit of a mess,” says Dad.

“I knew exactly where everything was,” I inform him, drumming my fingers on my knee. “And now I don’t. I found my Philip Glass in between Elgar and Liszt. _Elgar and Liszt!”_

Mum bites off a piece of muffin. “I did ask you to move it.”

“When?”

“Earlier.”

“What time?”

“Mmm...not sure. Deleted--”

“Well, it can’t have been before ten, as when I practiced this morning everything was in place, and I took a nap at two, and you were gone when I woke up half an hour later, so you must have asked me to move it and consequently done so yourself sometime while I was _bloody_ _sleeping.”_

“Language,” warns Dad, not really caring.

“Did ask,” says Mum around a mouthful of muffin.

“God!” I snap and hop to my feet. “I carry no respect in this household, do I? None whatsoever!”

“Rosie, just--calm down a minute here,” says Dad. “I’m--”

“I’m going upstairs,” I declare with a haughty head-toss, which is very dramatic as I’ve loads of dark curly hair to throw around, and necessary because the people of this household are highly dramatic and upstaging them is the only way to get any fucking attention. “I’ve got a half-hour rest scheduled to start in sixteen minutes.”

I slam my door behind me. Slamming one’s door is possibly the greatest satisfaction a Western adolescent can have, and I relish it greatly. The next fifteen minutes I spend reading, before putting my book down and making a go at another half-hour rest.

When I wake up, the flat is silent, which means Mum and Dad are probably in bed. Note I do not say “asleep.” I am a young woman of maturity and knowledge and I am all too aware that when Mum comes home after wrapping up a case with pupils dilated and cheeks flushed, I don’t want to be within earshot of their bedroom later. So I pick my book back up and read another few chapters.

Around four, I move downstairs. Dad gets up for work at five and sees me cross-legged on Mum’s chair finishing a chordal analysis of a Schumann piece.

“Rosie.”

“Morning, Dad.”

“Did you go to bed at all last night?”

“I told you, polyphasic sleep. Winston Churchill could--”

Dad waves a hand. “Fine. Just don’t try to rope me into it. Or your mother. Her sleep schedule is mad enough.” He shrugs his coat on and gives me a kiss on the top of the head on his way out the door. Dad-kisses-on-the-head are lovely. They’re how he says “I think you are absolutely batty and it’s darling.” They’re especially nice this morning, what with last night’s nonsense.

I have another nap at six. My alarm wakes me at 6:30, and Mum is sitting on the foot of my bed, legs crossed, fingers tented by her face and eyes fixed on me.

I blink a few times just to make sure this is actually happening. “Is privacy an entirely foreign concept to you?”

“I was wondering if your modified sleep schedule left you less aware of your surroundings while unconscious,” she says. “It appears so.”

“Don’t use me as a test subject. Too many confounding variables. Adolescents’ sleep needs are more demanding.” Mum grins, because I’ve used what Dad would call “a civil tone.” “I look forward to the day you can no longer go without sleep for three days due to your advanced senility,” I add ominously to make up for it. “Menopause impends.”

Mum raises an eyebrow at me, indicating a silent “really?” I sit up and ruffle my fingers through my hair, because even though I’ve only been sleeping for half an hour it’s still a mess. _Curls._ Also Mum’s fault.

“Most mothers have jobs,” I say. “Someplace to be, something to do? You have what, exactly?”

This is a low blow, and I know it, but my body is still adjusting to the new sleep cycles and my dopamine levels are basically nil and I am still irritated about the sheet music.

Mum hops up. “Going to Bart’s.” She doesn’t look at me as she pulls on her coat and descends the stairs.

Oh, guilt. “Give Aunt Molly my regards.”

She does not respond. The door slams shut.

I flop back onto my bed and groan. When does term start again?

\---

The polyphasic sleep experiment does not go particularly well. I keep falling asleep when I didn’t want to, so I call Sophie.

Sophie is The Girlfriend. Has been for about three months now, and it’s going rather shockingly well. Have had several snogs, which are more pleasant than I expected, plus a little bit of under-shirt and over-knicker action, and she does not find it odd when I phone her up and ask her to do things like come over and don’t let me fall asleep til I say. She is rather perturbed about my not telling the parentals about us dating, but it’s more fun this way. I’m waiting to see which one of them puzzles it out first. And besides, she hasn’t told hers either (though for her it’s more to do with being well shut up in the closet), so I’ll continue doing what I like, thanks.

I’m curled up on my bed in my room when she arrives, keeping myself from falling asleep by pinching my arm. Sophie joins me.

“You’re mildly lactose intolerant,” I inform her.

“Er...no I’m not.”

“Yes you are.”

She sighs. “Fine. Tell me how you know.”

I grin. “You smell of processed cheese. Takeout burrito. I can practically see it coming out of your pores.”

“Clever you.” She nuzzles my ear.

I wrinkle my nose. “I’m not kissing you while you smell like cheese.”

Sophie sighs, rolls over, and reaches for her bag.

“Mint won’t help.”

She starts to sit up, angling her body towards the bathroom.

“Nor will brushing your teeth.”

“What? Why won’t you--”

“I’m lactose intolerant too. Can’t even be near the smell without getting ill.”

She huffs. “So you really did invite me over to keep you from falling asleep?”

“If I had wanted you over for anything else, I would have _said_. ‘Come over, let’s put on The Prestige and not watch it.’ ‘Get over here, the parentals are out and my mouth needs a tongue in it.’ ‘I’m sad. Come hold me until I’m not.’ These are all lines that mean ‘Sophie Trask, will you please come and snog me until I’m quite dizzy.’ ‘Jo I need you to keep me from falling asleep’ is _obviously_ meant to be taken literally.”

“It’s really not obvious.”

She is possibly annoyed. But _why?_ Ugh. People maintenance is difficult.

“It really is.”

“Pardon me. I’m not psychic.”

“You don’t need to be psychic. Just observant.”

Sophie goes very quiet, and all of a sudden I am very unhappy. It’s probably the lack of sleep and the feeling of everyone, absolutely _everyone_ just being _so very far behind_ me, but I am very unhappy indeed.

So I punch my pillow, which startles Sophie off the bed. “Oh come on! You _know_ what I’m like, you _do,_ you know my friends--”

She laughs very nastily and I try to do what Mum told me about, where you file the hurt away for later. “Your friends. Right.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“It means you don’t communicate with _people,_ Rose! You can’t!”

“What are Oliver? Logan? Not people?”

“They’re nutters! The lot of you!” she bursts out. “Everybody told me you were as barking as they were, but you seemed so much...better! Normal!”

“I--”

She folds her arms over her chest. “This isn’t a relationship, Rose. This is you, using me, to get your needs met.”

This sends my head whirling, because _that isn’t a relationship?_ Two people who both have needs to be met, trying to compromise in order to maximize their individual and mutual satisfaction? I seem to have made a miscalculation. Unfortunately, I let it show, my cold head-cock and thinking face, and Sophie does not seem to appreciate it. She snatches up her bag and storms down the stairs.

“Sophie--” I shout, and chase her to the door, but she slams it behind her.

I stomp back up the stairs and throw myself onto my bed. Sod the polyphasic sleep experiment. Sod girls. Sod dating. Sod people. Sod _everything_. I bury my head in my pillow and decide that sleep is a thing that will happen now.

I wake up two hours later when Mum shuts my door behind her.

“You’re going to tell me I should knock before entering,” she says before I can say it, which is a thing I _hate_. “I think we can agree to forgo some of the usual rituals under the circumstances.”

I sit up slowly and try to smooth out some of the exceptionally appalling kinks in my hair as I think through my evidence trail. “Hmm...was it deleting my texts?”

“Hardly. Your girlfriend wears a very distinctive perfume marketed almost exclusively to teenaged girls, though it was almost undetectable today thanks to the absurd amounts of lactose being excreted out her pores.”

I giggle, because I make fun of Sophie’s perfume regularly.

“Additionally, her iron deficiency means she sheds hair all over the bloody flat, and neither your father nor I nor any of our usual visitors are quite that shade of blonde. And you’ve been playing Chopin more often. You play that when you’re happy.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“That one was your father,” she admits.

“She’s not my girlfriend anymore anyways,” I mutter. “Buggered that one good.” I scratch the inside of my arm very hard, the old standby for when what I’d really like to do is take something very sharp to it and slice and _slice_ until the endorphins dull everything and it’s only me and my mind. Quiet. Peaceful. Good.

“Hey,” Mum says, not alarmed, just demanding attention. She sits down on the edge of my bed next to me and closes her fingers round my wrists. “Don’t do that.”

I sniff. “I’m not like you. I can’t just switch them off. I need...assistance. Or else no people at all. They all _need_ things from me, and I _want_ to give them what they need, I _do,_ but I can’t always _tell_ what that _is_ and they just expect me to _know!_ Even when they _trick_ you and _say_ one thing and mean _completely another!_ How am I supposed to _know?_ How is _anyone_ supposed to know?”

By the end of it, I sound quite hysterical, and Mum’s got her arms around me and is hugging me very tightly and kissing my hair. Very-tight-Mum-hugs are even better than Dad-kisses-on-the-head, especially when accompanied by Mum-kisses-to-the-hair. They’re how she says to me that she feels what I am feeling and she knows it hurts. They also mean “I love you,” but all the different sorts of Mum/Dad hugs and kisses say that somewhere. Hardly bears mentioning really.

“You are quite extraordinary, Rosalind Watson-Holmes,” she tells me.

I snort.

“I mean that,” she insists softly. “You have my mind--don’t argue--but you let yourself _care_ so much more. It’s beautiful.”

“It’s rubbish.”

“It’s not, though I’ll bet it hurts.”

I hesitate. Nod.

“I’m sorry, Rosie. I am. Yes, the smaller people are dreadful sometimes. They stopped mattering to me because of it. They had to. But you are something else. They are dreadful and half the time you can’t understand them at all and when you do you want to hit them for being little and petty and awful. But you still strive to make them happy. I think I should find that pitiful, but I don’t. It’s...lovely.”

“I’m still pants at people.”

“Rosalind Cora. Consider your audience.”

I giggle a little.

“I had stopped caring about satisfying other people when I met your father, but he changed things. I wanted to please him, and to do that I had to occasionally please others. He helped me with that. You don’t need as much help. You already have the desire, you simply lack the observational and deductive skills necessary in the field.”

“How do you cultivate them?”

Mum’s mouth quirks up in a wry smile. “I mimic. So does your Uncle Mycroft. Most people seem to pick them up naturally, but some of us need a bit more tutoring. Your father can help with that.”

“Mother, there are certain topics I am _not_ comfortable about asking Dad for advice on.”

She chuckles. “You are an exceedingly clever girl. I feel confident in your research abilities.”

I give her a hug. It means “thank you” and “you are the most excellent Mum of all excellent Mums even if you are barmy and far too much like me and drive me round the twist 99.67% of the time.” Also “I love you,” but like I said, that hardly bears mentioning, really.

“Now, if you’re finished moping over that pungent blonde of yours, Lestrade’s informed me they’ve just found a man chucked off the top of the Eye despite the fact that he was in Washington an hour ago, and as your father’s still at work, I’m short an assistant.”

Just like that I am absolutely not at all sad.

“Are you--you want--you’re not--oh my God--”

Mum grins. “Go put on something comfortable.”

I dress in record time despite a brief debate about khakis vs. businessy slacks. I opt for a cozy jumper and dark jeans, because I look enough like Mum already without matching her crime scene outfits. Judging from her smirk when I tear down the stairs looking for my loafers, I’ve chosen correctly.

“You should know that in attempting to look distinct from me you’ve made yourself look rather like your father,” she says, and I change my mind.

“Oh, shut up, Mum.”

Uncle Greg is _not_ happy to see me at a crime scene. “Sherlock--”

“Hi Uncle Greg,” say I, quite breezily I might add despite my poorly-contained glee, and I duck under the crime scene tape Mum is holding up for me. “Dad’s at work, so Mum asked me to come instead.”

“Sherlock, I can’t let kids on crime scenes!

“I was a kid,” says Mum, at the same time as I say “Sixteen!”

Uncle Greg appears to be considering arguing, but shuts his mouth, rolls his eyes and lets us in.

I spot the body.

I recognize his face. He’s an MP from a little place up north, not particularly important but very smart talker, so lots of media attention. Married. Two children.

I have to blink a number of times and scratch at my wrist a bit to clear out the immediate emotional reaction, which is quick and harsh. _He ate about an hour before he died. One of those cheap food stands, from the sheen of his fingertips and nails. He had mild scoliosis but it wasn’t treated. It would have hurt when he bent over._

Mum is circling it--him-- _it_ \--slowly, studying. Now that I have quieted everything else, I am looking, _really_ looking. It’s not a thing I do often, because it’s usually pointless and it’s too much to keep my head doing all the time, but _God,_ it’s _good,_ having something to use it on. It’s like finding oddly sized batteries in your cupboard and finally finding the thing you bought them for, or finding an outfit that matches a really darling pair of shoes you bought on a whim, or realizing that the notes a song needs make up your very favorite chord of all the chords.

_Clothes--casual. Worn often. Inexpensive, but has hair and nails done recently and often, and by a professional. Same one every time. Very good too, very pricey, but he didn’t have the time or money to see specialist about scoliosis. Cheap clothes, no money for a chiropractor, but regularly sees some stylist to the stars?_

I start to laugh. It’s really, really not an appropriate thing in this particular situation, but it’s all just so fucking _hilarious_ that I really can’t help myself.

Uncle Greg looks alarmed. The other officers’s reactions fall on the sliding spectrum between disturbed and disgusted. Mum is just intrigued.

“What do you see?” she asks, using the patient voice in which she says “tell me” or “explain your reasoning.” Most parents never respect their children enough to listen to them as closely as my mother does when you respond to a question she poses in that voice. My Mum does. It’s marvelous.

I calm down and wipe my eyes. “Sorry. I--ha, sorry. It’s just--The Prestige.”

Mum nods impatiently and makes a little “continue” gesture with one hand.

“Really?Gattaca! Dead Ringers! The Prince and the Pauper! Dave!” I throw up my hands. “Hopeless, the lot of you!” I chuckle again and whip out my phone. “This isn’t Geoffrey Carlton. Matter of fact, he’s not a politician at all.”

“Er, excuse me, but it _is,”_ says Uncle Greg. “I may be old but I do watch telly.”

I snicker. “Bet your life? Check his prints. Not sure who killed him yet or why, but I can tell you he’s got a job in manual labor, probably factory work. I’m not sure what those stains on his shoes are from so I can’t be more specific, sorry. Tan line on finger says married, not long, more than likely came back from his honeymoon no more than three weeks ago. That he’s not wearing the ring means either he came he from work or he’s cheating on the lady already. From the clothes I’m guessing work. Once you ID him and run his financials I’m willing to bet he’s been getting an awful lot of money in regular installments.”

“What the--” Uncle Greg starts in.

“He’s a double. People like to use them sometimes for brief photo ops and appearances and the like. Find someone who looks enough like you, pay them enough and you’re set. You’ve never looked at those people’s schedules and thought ‘they’d have to be in two places at once?’ Occasionally, they are.”

Mum is grinning like a loon. I think I probably am too.

“That was good?” I ask her. “Was I right?”

She hops over the body (earning a _“Sherlock!”_ from Uncle Greg), grabs me by the shoulders and plants a kiss on my forehead with an audible smack. This is a new sort of kiss, and extrapolating from her current expression and the circumstances it means something along the lines of yes-good-you-are- _fantastic_. I blush very red, which is not an entirely unfamiliar state for my face to find itself in. Damn my capillaries.

“It was good,” Mum confirms. “Though you were wrong about the affair.”

I frown at the body. “What did I miss?”

“The perfume.”

I sniff the air. “Oh. OH! Come on, that’s not fair, you were closer! Of course you’d catch that!”

“I’d think you’d have an easier time detecting that particular scent.” She whirls away and stuffs her hands into her pockets, pacing round the body again. “Look for girls between fourteen and nineteen. She’s probably a distant relative or a friend of the family; they usually are. He was a bit drunk, so it was easier for her to push him.”

Uncle Greg is very pale and keeps looking at me. “So you’re saying he was...”

Mum’s mouth tightens. “Yes.” She strides over, loops her arm through mine, and leads us away from the scene. _“Do_ try to use your head before bothering to call me in the future, Lestrade. If my sixteen-year-old can solve your case in four minutes then I’d hope you could manage it in forty.”

The whole cab ride home she can’t stop chuckling. Every once in a while she grabs my head and kisses it again, saying things like “unbelievable” and “brilliant.” I try to be modest, but Mum-compliments are quite rare and she does have Opinions on modesty and the uselessness thereof, so I do a _teensy_ bit of gloating. The gloating comes in between though, sandwiched by self-berating for missing the perfume or determinedly not-thinking about a girl my age somewhere who just pushed a man to his death--probably a man she knew--after he’d done God only knows how much to her.

“Were you thinking about me?” I ask, because the unspoken rules of social conduct dictate that I shouldn’t ask “don’t you feel bad for her.” Plus I know what it’s like to feel nothing when everyone says you should, and it really isn’t pleasant. Mum and I speak the same language that way. “When you realized it was a girl my age.”

“Of you,” says Mum, not meeting my eyes because she’s got her phone out and is texting someone, presumably Dad. “And of your malodorous blonde. Of me when I was your age. I always do. It’s a frame of reference, provides me with placeholder faces to paste in until I’ve more definite information. But you’re not asking that.”

“Nope. I’m asking if it makes you sad, or scared, or angry, or sick.”

“Do you feel sad or scared or angry or sick?” she asks mildly.

I swallow. “Yes. At first. But I can...chase it back in my head. Shut it up. I can’t really think when I’m feeling.”

She laughs softly and shakes her head. “You’re so much better than I.”

“I am not!”

“You really are. You’re--oh, what’s that--”

“I am _not_ fishing for compliments.” I was fishing for compliments.

“You want me to break it down?”

“No, I--”

“That you can feel and _then_ ‘chase it back,’ as you say, and focus on the problem at hand allows you to process on levels I cannot. You can empathize without being overrun. It took me years to learn how to intellectualize human emotions. You do it naturally. That is a _very_ useful skill indeed.”

I kiss her on the cheek. It is a damn-I’m-chuffed sort of kiss.

We storm up the stairs with takeout in hand. Dad is on the sofa watching the news.

“Get up!” I shout and throw him a fortune cookie, because we eat the fortune cookies first. “We’re having a post-case feast!”

“It’s not post-case, we haven’t found who killed him yet!”

“But we will!”

“But we haven’t.”

“Fine, it’s a Rosie’s-first-crime-scene feast.”

“So. You two _did_ go to a crime scene,” Dad says, and the look he’s giving Mum is about twelve kinds of not good.

Mum drops into a chair in the kitchen, sets down her box of takeout and shrugs. “What? That shedding blonde left her; she needed a pick-me-up.”

_“Mum!”_

“Oh please, you _know_ he knew. Those are the kinds of things he knows.”

“Sherlock,” Dad says patiently, “crime scenes are not pick-me-ups.”

“Oh, _please_ don’t get on Mum for taking me to a crime scene,” I beg. “It was good. Really good.”

_“She_ was good. John, we did it. Our offspring is perfect.”

Dad shakes his head, switches off the telly and joins us at the table. “I’m less hung up on the crime scene and more on this _bitch--”_

_“Dad!”_

“--ditching my truly _fantastic_ daughter.”

Dad turns out to also be very good after breakups too, though less in the distract-the-dumped-daughter way and more in the insulting-the-ex, nasty-threats manner. There are many mentions of the Browning and Sophie’s “fat face,” which are pleasing because Dad does not actually mean them. Mum does not make such threats unless she intends to go through with them. Uncle Mycroft is not kept appraised of my social goings-on for similar reasons.

We polish off the evening with a Twilight Zone marathon. Dad lets me have one of his beers. It tastes like drinking bread and makes me feel all sort of loose and relaxed, which is quite pleasant. We end up half-asleep on the couch in a pile, with my head on Dad’s leg and Mum’s on his shoulder with one arm slung around him.

“I may want to sleep in a bed at a point in the future,” says Dad dryly.

“Mmm...no,” say I. “You’re a pillow. An excellent pillow.”

“She’s quite right,” says Mum, all drowsy and satisfied-sounding.

“God help me. I haven’t got a wife and daughter, I’ve octopi.”

“Yes, but you love us,” says Mum.

Dad laughs and kisses first me then her, and it’s the best sort of kiss, the one that says nothing but what doesn’t even bear mentioning. “I do. Quite.”

My parentals are the _best_.


End file.
